“Ah! Might as well drop off at Grant Road and show him the devil before God.”
“Very good. Very good.”
The roads became narrower and more crowded. We advanced like a juggernaut, the horn bleating continuously. In front of us the milling figures parted and closed again the moment we had passed. Eyes, caught in the glare of the headlamps, stared from brown faces.
“Here, Munshi?”
“Very good.”
We tumbled out, and I followed after the other two down the side-streets, self-consciously. Here everyone was Indian. They stared at Mr. Scaife and me, the two white-skins, so that I was glad Mr. Munshi was escorting us; it made me feel a little less alien, less of an intruder. Nevertheless, I had the feeling that we were trespassing, that at any moment we would be told to get out—or that the crowd would turn on us suddenly and tear us to pieces. Yet they seemed perfectly docile. Even the beggars, if you showed anger, removed their suppliant hands. But the children were plucking at my trousers. I said, “Jaow! Jaow!” but still they went on chattering round me. They grabbed at my hand. I withdrew it quickly, wiped it on my shirt. I thought rather sneakingly that afterwards I had better have a disinfectant bath. They said you couldn’t catch diseases in this way, but all the same . . . there was something repulsive in the bare contact with these depraved-looking children.
“Jaow!” I said.
“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” If it would have sent them away I would have given them their annas. But it wouldn’t.
“Challo, challo,” Mr. Munshi said. They looked at him to see if he meant it; for a minute they could not make up their minds. Then he added something else in Hindustani, and they fell behind, all the animation suddenly gone out of them because the hope of their penny had gone. A penny would have bought them a meal.
“Not many places in the world you’ll see this,” Mr. Scaife said, indicating the houses at the sides of the street.
The shops had now given way to buildings in which every door and window was barred like a cage; and through the bars we caught glimpses of brightly painted lips and powdered cheeks, and brass ornaments hung from ears and noses . . . whilst above, in upper windows and balconies, silhouettes of hair and shoulders were framed invitingly by the dim orange light of inner rooms. Somewhere music was being churned out mechanically and there was a babble of voices. It was almost gay. And at night these old, unpainted façades of the houses had a beauty of their own. Then there were shops again, cafés, sudden explosions of light.
And then only the dark fronts of houses with beds out on the pavements and people already asleep there.
“Not far now,” Mr. Scaife said. “No question about it being all right at this time of night, is it, Munshi?”
“It is a time when Vikrana has many disciples,” Mr. Munshi said. “Mr. Quinn will find here some difference from what he has just seen. It is not often in one evening dat one visits de extremes. We must hope dat de worldly scene will bias our friend to de spiritual.”
We had come to an open space where arid grass struggled through parched brown earth. Ownerless dogs scampered about, and here and there figures sprawled like corpses forgotten by a battle. We began to cross this space. A small shack came into view, surrounded by a fence and a locked gate. At this Mr. Munshi stopped. He shook it gently and the chain rattled.
From behind the hut there came an old man, of no more than pigmy stature. He came slowly, and clutched two bars of the fence and peered through; his eyes were old and distant like a madman’s, or like the eyes of someone who is blind, and I did not think he could see what he gazed at. But when Mr. Munshi spoke, he inserted his key at once in the lock and the gate creaked open. We went through and on to the verandah of the shack. Through the cracks of the door I could see a light. But there was no sound apart from the clank of the chain behind us as the old man again fixed the padlock.
Mr. Munshi did not look round. He lifted the latch of the door and pushed it open, and the light fell on his plump, beaming face; only now his smile was not what it had been. It was not the broad smile of Malabar Hill when he had held his glass of lemonade in his lap, and it was not the Grant Road smile of toleration; it was a faint and peaceful and holy smile, a candlelight instead of a beacon. It was a smile that fitted the scene within.
There were half a dozen people seated in a semicircle on the floor, lightly garbed in cotton cloth or muslin. At their focus was another figure sitting cross-legged on a dais, naked except for a loin-cloth. From his erect body his neck rose like a pillar, squarely holding his head, with the white beard tilted upwards. It was a fine patriarch’s face, with a broad Socratic forehead, like a marble bust; and the eyes were more than ever like marble, with the pupils revolved upwards out of sight above the unblinking lids.
Mr. Munshi beckoned us in. He closed the door behind us, and the latch clicked sharply in the silence. His hand waved to a place on the floor, and then he subsided neatly without moving his feet, as though all of a sudden the bones that supported his flesh had melted. Mr. Scaife squatted next to him with only a little less ease, the bones of his knees sticking out through his thin trousers, and his head high. I followed suit clumsily, taking my weight on my hands and lowering myself on to the coarse coconut-matting of the floor, I tried to pull my feet well under me, but my joints were stiff and pained me. I relaxed them, and placed my arms round the outside of my legs to keep them in, clasping my hands in front. My back was sloped. When I straightened it there was also a pain in my spine, so I let it remain as it was. My head hung in physically essential humility.
I stared at the Master. I was the only one who was staring, for the disciples were lost in their own contemplation. They had not even glanced in our direction as we entered, though the pupils of their eyes were not, like the Master’s, rotated out of sight. Their eyelids blinked and they breathed. At first I did not think the Master was breathing. Then I watched carefully a point on his breast where the yellow light from the oil lamp shone on his skin. I watched for a long time and I saw that it rose and fell slowly, perhaps once in a minute. But it was difficult to judge time. I tried to guess, after a while, how long we had sat there. It might have been ten minutes, or twenty, or a couple of hours. I had a feeling that the room was timeless. I looked at the white sculptured eyeballs and wondered if they were sending me into some kind of trance. A queer sensation passed over me and I closed my eyes to try to think more clearly. I was not sure whether or not I was dreaming, and I pulled my foot in sharply so that the heel of my shoe came against the back of my thigh. I felt its hardness; I was not asleep. Nevertheless, there was something dream-like in this. Or as though I was a little drunk. That same dizziness . . . I opened my eyes again. No one had moved. In the lamplight those white eyeballs were like twin moons. The body was still frozen, statuesque. There was no doubt that something had gone out of it. When you look at a dead body you can see that something has gone, and this body was like that of the dead. And in the room was the stillness of death, the timelessness. When you are dead there is no more time. Yet I could feel that this was no ordinary death. I could feel something else, something positive, that was flowing into me. As it came into my shoulders I grew more comfortable. And then it seemed to be seeping down from my shoulders like a soothing oil and, like oil in a machine, it eased my body. I began to experience a strange tranquillity. I no longer wondered what length of time we had been in the room, but only how long this pleasing sensation would last.
It was only for a short time. As though I was waking from sleep, part of my mind clarified and became practical and I looked at the figure on the dais and saw an old Indian in a trance, and I realised how uncomfortable, after all, was this uncustomary position. I saw Mr. Munshi’s felicitous smile and thought of him bouncing in the taxi-cab, and I remembered Mr. Scaife in the office of the Eastern Empire Bank, with the secretary at the noiseless typewriter, and I thought of myself and how amused Peter would be, and
Mervyn and Mario, if they could see me thus cross-legged with a pain growing in my joints. It was ridiculous to suppose that in my moment of tranquillity I had been brushed by the spirit of the fakir, or that I had stood on the verge of another world. In this queer atmosphere my imagination had played tricks. Meanwhile, enough—I was aching. If somebody did not move soon, I should have to let myself out quietly. I could drop a word to Mr. Scaife, and wait outside, stroll amongst the pie-dogs and the littered bodies of the homeless. At any rate, it was life outside. This was death, after all, though these people would call it Life, Life with a capital L. Very well, take Life if you will renounce dinner at the Taj and conversation with Peter, and meeting new people and bed with Sabby. Life with a little ‘l’—there was a lot to be said for it . . .
There was a sudden movement—a simultaneous relaxation by everyone as though they were responding to a common impulse. The Master Vikrana’s eyeballs rolled. Dark pupils appeared and coursed rapidly round, and finally settled in the centre. His eye-lids blinked and his breathing took up a normal rhythm. He moved his hands. It was as though, preserved in ice for a time, he was beginning to thaw.
Mr. Munshi caught my eye and smiled. Mr. Scaife stared at a higher point on the ceiling and opened his mouth; I expected an “Ah!” to issue forth, but he kept his exclamation silent. The disciples looked at the Master and the Master surveyed the assembly. I was surprised how human he now appeared, how strikingly benign was his face by contrast with the depersonalised mask of his trance.
He made some sign, and one of his disciples moved closer to the dais, sitting just beneath him. Then he took a board from his side on which the Hindu alphabet was written. His finger moved rapidly from one letter to another as he spelt out a message. I remembered I had been told that the Master Vikrana had taken a vow of silence. The disciple was his mouthpiece. The disciple spoke, and he looked at me, and I knew that he was speaking to me although I understood nothing of his words.
Mr. Munshi began to interpret.
“De Master says dat it is a really unexpected pleasure to have here a new visitor.”
I inclined my head in acknowledgment of the courtesy.
“De master now asks if it is as a sight-seer dat you come, or if it is dat you are searching for de great Truth?”
“A bit of both,” I said, to do myself more than justice, and I left Mr. Munshi to find a Hindustani equivalent of this. His own interpretation was less laconic; he must have added his own diagnosis of my intentions. His voice sounded sympathetic, and Lala Vikrana nodded his white beard understandingly. For a moment or two he meditated. He stroked his beard and he looked at me with penetration, and he went on nodding, and all the disciples looked at the Master and waited for his words of judgment. He looked so wise and Socratic and infallible that I waited with eagerness—though I was not sure what I was waiting for, unless it was to hear that I was damned or saved; and either I could have believed, and his words might have tilted the scale a little more in one way or the other.
At last the Master’s fingers began to dance once more over the letters. The disciples’ eyes flicked after them, and the pronouncement was made. Mr. Munshi gave it to me at third hand.
“De Master has said dat during his trance for a short while only he was aware of you, and dat also you were aware of him. He does not consider dat you were enough determined to enter into de spiritual circle. He says dat you encourage yourself to be sceptical, and dat he can do nothing for you unless you enter your whole heart into de pursuit of dis ultimate Truth, which is ultimate happiness. He says dat if you have a question he would gladly give answer.”
“Doesn’t the Master consider it possible to find happiness in a lower sphere?”
The question went back, and this time the reply came quickly.
“De Master says indeed dere is great happiness to be found; and he asks why it is dat you put dat question when you have already de answer for yourself. He wishes it to be said clearly dat unless you are prepared to study first de yoga of de body, and den when you have cleared out of your path dese corporeal obstacles, de yoga of de mind, he would not care for you to deviate from de Christian principles which he so greatly admires.” There was a pause whilst Vikrana’s fingers added a paragraph. “He says now dat he is pleased you did not request him, in de manner of a British person who once visited, to do tricks; for whilst it is in his power to do ‘tricks,’ such as to project his thoughts over many, many miles, dis is to him only de fruit of his understanding of higher things, as de projection of wireless waves is de fruit of de great knowledge of your scientists. He does not himself understand wireless. He says de scientists are great, clever men, but deir chosen way to heaven is a long, difficult way, and all along dere are beautiful mirages. And now he regrets to be discourteous, but he must devote himself for de rest of his time to his disciples. Is dere one more final thing you would care to request of him?”
“No,” I said. “There is nothing. Unless he can give me a parting piece of advice that I may always keep in memory of this visit.”
Vikrana was obviously anxious to oblige. He stroked his beard in meditation and looked at me with an iron-steady gaze. I looked back into his eyes, and I wanted to look away again, but his gaze was like a challenge. I held it for what seemed like minutes, fighting off the temptation to let my eyes fall away; and then I knew that it no longer required strength of mind to return his stare, that his eyes compelled mine to his and by no effort of will could I now bring myself to withdraw them. I knew that he possessed some power over me; and at the same time I was aware of its benevolence, and the utter abandon with which I could give myself up to it.
Suddenly my eyes began to swim and there seemed to be a fog between us. And through the middle of the fog like two steel shafts his gaze still came, piercing their way into my brain. Next I knew only that the shafts had gone, and that in the dispersing fog I could hear the voice of the disciple, and then of Mr. Munshi.
“De Master says dat you have great power. Dis power is to give happiness, and it is not to be used without de utmost awareness. You will give yourself at de same time much happiness and much sadness; and de sadness will be terrible and in de midst of it you will say ‘It has been well worth while.’ ”
And then the three of us were rising to our feet, and placing the tips of our fingers together in the gesture of respect, and going out through the door of the shack; and outside the air was cooler and we breathed it deeply. The old pigmy man who guarded the Master from the mischievous attacks of youths clanked his key in the lock.
“Well,” Mr. Scaife said: “What do you think of him?”
“It was very interesting,” I said. “But after all, what he said is true of everybody, isn’t it? Haven’t we all got the power to give happiness?”
(3)
We went back by taxi, stopping at Toledo to let Mr. Munshi get out. His face shone through the window, not a candle but a beacon again. I thanked him for his kindness; he was a Brahmin, a pundit, a busy man, and he had devoted his whole evening to my instruction. “Not in de least,” he said. “Dis is a little matter. Please do not mention it again.”
“Better come back and have a drink,” Mr. Scaife said to me when the white dhoti had disappeared through a doorway.
“It’s very good of you,” I said. “But I think not tonight . . .”
“Why not?”
He rapped it out. It was a question to which he demanded an answer. Why not?
“It’s getting rather late,” I said.
“Only five-to-eleven.”
“Oh well, in that case,” I said, “just a quick one perhaps.” I had known it was only five-to-eleven, but I could not bring myself to make a stand against his insistence. It was a kind of detached and yet passionate insistence, as though I was a woman for whom he cared nothing but whom instinct urged him to possess. I wondered if for some reason he was afraid of being left alone.
The servant was waiting in the house. Mr. Scaife dismissed him, and we went into the drawing-room and began to drink the whisky and talk about the yogi. He sat opposite me in an armchair, and he talked in a curious, lofty and distant and unapproachable way, though occasionally he would suddenly shoot me a glance as though to confirm that I was still there, like an actor who breaks off a play for a moment to make sure that there is really someone in the stalls. He talked with very self-conscious intelligence; he ought to have been to a university, and he had not been, and he had never quite forgotten that. And then I began to see that all this intelligence went in circles round himself. He was almost a cultured version of Fenwick; but where Fenwick plunged crudely at the centre with undisguised boasting (“There’s nothing I can’t tell you about that—I’ve read all the best books on the subject. . .”), he spun a clever web round the circumference and from the circum-ference left you to guess at the centre. And yet you could see that he was struggling to keep his knowledge detached, and knew his own failure and wanted to hide it.
But he really had the knowledge, and Fenwick hadn’t; he had the desire to dig it out of dusty books and unfrequented places, and he despised Fenwick’s source of information, which was popular encycloapedias and An A.B.C. of Philosophy. And on the subject of yoga he was the expert that Mr. Headley had proclaimed him.
I wanted to know how much he practised it, and I asked him. He was vague; it embarrassed him to be dragged from the circumference to the centre, and he escaped back again as quickly as he could. But he did try to practise it, that much was clear. He went down on the carpet and demonstrated the position of the yogi, almost sitting on one foot and the other dragged over on to the opposite thigh. He could do it well, and for an Occidental it cannot be done without practice. But if he had got this far with the yoga of the body, how far behind was he with the yoga of the mind, when the first fetters to be broken were egotism and desire?
Besides, there was the whisky. He drank a good deal, and for some reason, although I wanted to go, I went on drinking with him. The whisky brought him nearer the centre of his circle, and he became more approachable, more human. He talked personally. He said suddenly that he hated the bank, whereas before he would not have confessed it. And then he began to talk of Sabby. He began to talk of her as though he could not help it.
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